Saturday, February 18, 2012

Brook Lopez to make season debut Sunday

New Jersey's Brook Lopez has yet to play in a game this season. That will change Sunday.

Lopez is expected to start on Sunday against the Bucks.

“It’s going to be great, because a lot of the things that he does you just can’t teach,” [coach Avery] Johnson said, per Stefan Bondy of the NY Daily News. “You can’t teach seven foot tall, his touch, he’s bigger and stronger than he’s ever been and he’s ready to go. We’ve done everything in terms of communicating with the doctors, and Tim Walsh our trainer, we’ve taken every precaution under the sun. We think he’s ready and he’ll be ready to go tomorrow.”

In his first three seasons in the NBA, Lopez has seen his scoring average increase from 13.0 to 18.8 to 20.4 points per game last year.

Although he saw his rebounding average drop to 6.0 per game last year from 8.7 in 2009-10, Lopez has shot more than 50 percent from the field, more than 80 percent from the line and averaged 1.7 blocks per game in his career.